Chapter 35 - The Siege on the Sanctuary
"What do you mean, selling Lily?" I screamed into the phone, forgetting the men on the bridge, forgetting the cold, forgetting everything except the terror that surged through my veins like fire.
Miles clamped his hand over my mouth, dragging me deeper into the hollow beneath the bridge footing. Above us, the men had heard something; their heavy boots crunched against the gravel, and a flashlight beam sliced through the blackberry bushes, illuminating the churning white water just three feet from our boots.
On the phone, the ancient voice rasped again, punctuated by the mechanical click of an oxygen pump. "Richard made a covenant with Drake in 1991. When the trust funds ran dry from his investments in South America, Richard didn't just borrow money. He pledged the estate’s reversionary interest. If Richard goes to prison, the trust dissolved—unless an heir takes his seat on the board. Drake doesn't want the land, Elena. He wants the legal guardianship of the Sterling heir. He wants Lily's signature on the water easements when she turns eighteen."
"She’s six years old!" I sobbed against Miles’s palm.
"And in twelve years, she will be worth four hundred million dollars in industrial liabilities," Charles whispered. "They will take her, Elena. They will use the state family courts. They have Judge Vance’s grandson on the bench."
Miles went completely rigid beside me. His hand slipped from my mouth, his fingers trembling. "My cousin," Miles breathed, his voice hollowed by a sickening realization. "Judge Gregory Vance. He was assigned to Richard’s custody hearing two hours ago."
"Elena," the old man on the wire wheezed, his breath growing shallow. "The second ledger... look at page one hundred and four. Look at the signature from October 1978. That is your shield. Use it before the dawn docket. I cannot... I cannot stay on this line. They have found the flat in Montreux."
A sudden crash of splintering wood echoed through the receiver, followed by the harsh shout of men speaking French, a scuffle, and then the line went dead.
"Grandfather!" I yelled into the dead phone.
"Elena, we have to move now!" Miles grabbed my wrist, hauling me to my feet.
Up on the road, Drake’s men were already descending the slope, their powerful searchlights cutting through the mist like light sabers. "They’re down by the discharge pipe!" one shouted.
"Run!" Miles roared.
We broke through the undergrowth, abandoning the cover of the briars, racing along the rocky shoreline of the Blackwood River. The river was our only path; the gorge walls rose eighty feet on either side, slick with wet moss and sheer granite.
Behind us, a sharp *crack* echoed off the stone abutment—a gunshot. The bullet chipped a chunk of rock three inches above Miles’s head, showering us in stone dust.
Miles didn't flinch. He didn't cower. The man who had begged me six months ago not to rock the boat, who had pleaded with me to let his family keep their quiet dignity, suddenly turned, caught a heavy piece of drift oak from the riverbank, and hurled it with terrifying precision into the face of the first pursuer who slid down the mud bank.
The wood connected with a sickening crunch. The man went down into the freezing water with a choked cry.
"Keep going!" Miles yelled, shoving me toward the old maintenance catwalk that hung suspended beneath the western span of the bridge. "Get to the other side! Arthur left his spare truck at the ranger station!"
We scrambled up the rusted iron ladder of the catwalk, thirty feet above the roaring rapids. My hands were bloody, my jeans soaked in river sludge, but I clutched the canvas duffle bag against my chest like it was my own heart.
When we reached the far side, scrambling over the chain-link fence into the gravel lot of the abandoned ranger station, Arthur’s battered 1998 Ford pickup sat beneath the pines, the keys resting on the front tire just as he had promised.
May you like
Miles threw open the door, fired the engine, and we tore out of the lot just as Julian Drake’s Mercedes crested the bridge behind us, its high beams catching our rear window in an explosion of blinding white light.
***
